In this lesson, we introduce basic footwork. In the next few lessons, we will look at each aspect of footwork in detail, using video of variety of professional players for illustration.

We break down footwork into six stages that are based on the result to be achieved in each stage. In addition to organizing according to purpose, stages also allow us to understand where a player is losing time. Since footwork is cyclical, we symbolically present the six stages as a circle in the figure below.

The Action Cycle

The observation stage is the time during which you observe how your opponent moves and prepares to strike the ball (your split step occurs here). In this stage, you must read your opponent's intentions from both body movement and circumstances (such as being on the run versus standing still). Following this stage is the orientation stage, during which you determine the ball's direction and depth. The third stage is the adjustment stage, during which you adjust your position to the ball. Once you make this adjustment, you enter the preparation stage, during which you arrest your movement and take your racquet back (the takeback). Following this is the strike movement (to include the contraction, rotation, acceleration, and strike stages of the stroke). Following this is the recovery stage, in which you return your feet and racquet to a neutral position.

These stages can overlap to varying degrees, and we separate them only in order to approach the development of footwork in a disciplined and purposeful manner.

Click image to see the large-file video. Click here to see the small-file video.

In the figure above, Anastasia Myskina is at the preparation-to-strike stage. Once the ball is struck, she must recover her racquet and feet to the ready-to-observe position and begin discerning what her opponent, Nadia Petrova, is going to do. As Petrova strikes the ball, Myskina detects its direction or path orientation and then moves to the adjust-to-the-ball stage, which has two parts. First is to move laterally to adjust to the ball's direction (this can be discerned early, before the ball reaches the net). The second part is when the depth of the ball is determined after the ball has crossed the net. Adjusting to the depth of the ball requires forward or backward movement. These two movements can merge into a diagonal movement as the ball approaches the bounce. At the bounce, it is necessary to move to the preparation-to-strike stage. After the ball bounces, Myskina stops her backward movement and reverses her direction so that she can be moving forward at the strike. This is the preparation stage, in which the stroke stages are executed.

We repeat that these six footwork stages do overlap. However, in every stage, there is something that must be done to maintain the rally. At high speeds, these six movements must often be executed in about 2.5 seconds.